


In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

by warmommy



Category: Inglourious Basterds
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - World War II, Aquariums, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, F/M, Love Triangles, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Time Shenanigans, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-14
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-14 18:48:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13013934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmommy/pseuds/warmommy
Summary: A few years after the end of the war, Wicki reconnects with his battle buddy. Then he remembers. Then she remembers. It sets off a chain, moving backwards and forwards through time, all these flashes of who he was and who she will be. Life is just a complicated network of choices, and, unfortunately, people usually make the wrong ones.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!

**_1947–_ **

All in all, staying connected wasn’t that easy. Every member of the team known today as the Inglourious Basterds, the ones that had made it, anyway, spread out across the States once the war was over. Wilhelm Wicki had gone back to New Jersey without any clue of what else he should do, and, for the most part, he didn’t know where anyone else had wound up. Donny was back in Boston, for sure, but it wasn’t like he had an address to look him up.

Then, out of nowhere, he was looking through his mail one evening and among the usual notes and ads was a bright yellow envelope with his name written in loopy cursive across the front. 

Wilhelm sighed and smiled, a wave of excitement coming over him that he hadn’t known for a long time, tossed everything else aside, and thumbed the letter open carefully. 

_Hallo, Schön! Wie geht es dir?_

_  
Are you terribly bored as well, dear? I’ve been wondering a lot about you lately and managed to knick your address off Smitty. Listen Will, it’s been too long, and you remember how awful I am at writing letters. Call me sometime, yeah? If I’m being honest, just hearing your voice again will do me a lot of good. Here’s to hoping you miss me a bit, too._

__  
Ich drück Dich!  
Laura

It was all of a sudden like a sunburst in his mind, the memory of waving goodbye to her at the depot. Her dress was that same shade of yellow, and he wondered if she had meant for that to be. He thought about that sometimes for a while, but it had been a long time now. Mostly his visions of her were dark and drab, still aiming that Karabiner, smudges of blood and soot on her cheeks. 

Now it came clear as day, her waving back to him, white gloves, a string of pearls, a suitcase by her feet. She hadn’t smiled. There, behind her, Hugo was looking at him, too, that dark shade of blue that he wore in his clothes and in his eyes, those lines on his face like he couldn’t wait for him to leave.

* * *

It almost turned out that he didn’t call. A couple of weeks passed and it started getting cold as all hell and Wilhelm thought back on wrapping up in wool blankets, sitting around a weak fire while it snowed its ass off. Laura was always there next to him, all huddled up with her gun and pressed right up against Hirschberg because he was a bitch about the cold, too. She’d grown up in much warmer places than Austria and France.

When he caught himself unable to think about anything other than whether or not she was warm, now, and that’s why he pulled her letter off the bureau; he’d read it enough times to memorize the number by now, but he wanted to be looking at the words she wrote when he heard her voice again.

Was it too late in the evening to call? Shit. 

He gripped the receiver a little tighter when she picked up and greeted him, lit a cigarette. “Uh…”

God, what it felt to hear her laugh again. “Will? I was wondering if you were ever going to call!”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Because you’re the only yeti/human hybrid I know. Of course I know that voice. Are you well, Schön?”

Wilhelm sat back in his chair, taking a deep drag. “Yeah, I am. Really. I was more worrying about you than myself.”

“Oh? What for?”

“Sounds dumb, but it’s snowing out and I was hoping you weren’t cold.”

He could actually hear her smile, envisioned it, held it in.

“Not stupid, you’re just lovely like that. I’m not cold, Will. I’m inside, and it’s nice. I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I’ve been in Queens all year and I just miss you. Is there any chance I could meet up with you sometime soon? I’m even willing to come to West Orange.”

He laughed now, stubbing out the cigarette he’d mostly neglected until it was close to his fingertips. “You’ve only been an hour away all year? Shit, what’ve you got to keep me from coming tonight?” She was quiet, and he shook his head at no one. “I didn’t mean–”

“Will, I  _miss_  you. Let me come to you.” There was this sudden stillness that he couldn’t quite trace. Something in Laura’s voice that sounded both distant and grieving.

“Al–all right, honey.” He’d never called her that. Nothing even remotely close. She was a soldier, same as him. There was just something he could tell needed comforting and he didn’t know how to do that. “Whatever you want. Okay?”

“I know what I must sound like right now,” she was near breathless, and he thought he could hear a faint sniffle. “Don’t worry about me, Will, I’m just glad you called. I think this is the happiest I’ve been since we brought Roberta home.”

Wilhelm’s eyebrows jumped, his jaw dropped. His hands reached for cigarettes and a match all of their own accord. “Oh, I, uh, I never knew you had settled down and had a child.”

“What?” she sniffled again. “I don’t have a child. Roberta is a–pet. Damn, sorry for being so wishy-washy and confusing.”

“It’s all right.” God, was he relieved, though. But how come? What was behind  _that_? “Listen, Laura, I know it’s late and snowing like hell–”

“No, that doesn’t matter. It’s not important. Can I come to you? Please?”

“ _Ja. Ja,_ please do. I’ll go around the corner and pick up–anything but scotch.” It was supposed to be a joke, but he regretted making it right away. “Brandy it is, then. 

“I’ll get my coat and be on my way. I hope you don’t have anywhere to go early tomorrow.” When the hell had she started sounding like Mae West?

He laughed anyway. “I don’t, actually.”

The next hour after hanging up brought the most painful and anxious anticipation Wilhelm Wicki had ever felt in his entire life. It buzzed and shook through his hands when he shaved and went out for the booze. He actually did drink a glass of scotch as he smoked and rifled through his mail just for something to do while he waited, it just needed to be gone before Laura saw. 

He chalked it all up to nerves, the thought of seeing one of the only other people who’d witnessed and experienced all the same shit overseas. He thought about how pissed he’d been to be paired up with Laura by Lt. Raine, and also the shame he felt later on for thinking that way. Laura was good on her own in the field. He wondered how she’d been adjusting.

He heard the brakes of a taxi squeal and saw the bright headlights and was downstairs with the door open before she even stepped out of the car. When the cab drove off, they remained standing a few feet apart, soaking in the changes. Her hair was every bit as black and thick, but longer now, brushing just below her shoulders. Her lips were red, and her eyelashes looked thicker and dark.

“I missed you,” she said quietly, in such a voice that started to quell all the jumbling that was going on inside him. Slowly, she unfolded her arms and held them open for him.

He should’ve hugged her like this the last time he saw her. Now he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t. He couldn’t remember why in the hell he’d ever let her drift off across the country in the first place. He kissed the top of her head and felt snowflakes melt against his lips. “Let’s get you inside,” he whispered, now kissing her ear. 

Laura grabbed him by the shoulders with surprising force and kissed him equally hard, but it only caught him off guard for a second. His body knew this was coming long before his mind did. They paused just after closing the front door behind themselves and on nearly every step up the stairwell, the wood creaking beneath their feet as her hands made havoc of his hair.

Wilhelm had her up against the wall as soon as his own door was closed and locked, just unable to make it any further without more and more and more. He said her name without ever thinking what it had meant to him previously, because this was a whole new and better world. 

He was inside of her within five minutes of laying eyes on her for the first time in years. Laura was pinned between him and the wall and her big green eyes peering at him through the foggy haze of lust and love just made him growl and take her harder. There was no protest, only a whole-hearted return of everything he was giving. 

She didn’t call him Will, but Wilhelm, and he could feel her nails through his shirt. He repeated hers against her lips, chin, neck, chest, anywhere, everywhere.

They got into the bed sometime after, still clothed but mussed, the bottle of brandy between them. She lit a cigarette for him because his hands were still pretty useless.

“Why the fuck haven’t you been here this whole time?”

She rolled her eyes in that playful way he’d seen half a million times before and took a drink. “If I’d been here from the start, you wouldn’t have wanted me this long.”

“Oh, bullshit.” The way she fit up against him was fucking perfect. “What’ve you been up to in Queens? Of all fucking places.”

“You’re an Austrian Jew living in West Orange, New Jersey, and you’re gonna make fun of me for being a Texas girl living in Queens?”

“Absolutely.”

The way she laughed was fucking perfect, too. Laura sat up and started to unbutton his shirt, make him more comfortable. “Well, Texas gets restless. I applied to work at the aquarium, just sorta did it, you know, half-drunk, never expected anything back, but, no shit, they called, made me an offer, and I’ve been there since.”

“I would’ve come to see you. I’d even go to the aquarium.”

“I can’t believe you’re the one human being that doesn’t like them.”

“Maybe it’s the yeti in me,” he winked. 

She wrinkled her nose and started on her shirt, now. Unable to help himself, he sat up beside her against the headboard. “I work with the cephalopods. Squids and octopuses and cuttlefish. They’re better than people.”

Wilhelm scoffed. “You sound like Stiglitz.”

Oh, he did not like that pause. 

Laura just kept on smiling, a little more stiffly.

“Where’s he at? What’s he up to?” Not that he cared, really. There was never a whole lot of bonding between Stiglitz and the rest of the Basterds, and that was mainly because he was a violent, psychotic prick. 

She shrugged, a cute little toss of her shoulder. “He’s around, bein’ Hugo. Last week he had his whole little citizenship ceremony thing. He was nervous the whole time.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Oh, stop. You don’t have to be mean about it anymore. He’s just a person like I’m a person and you’re a person. The aquarium really mellows him the fuck out, too. It’s been good for him.”

“Laura? I might die, depending on how you answer this question–”

She laughed again and it was the most carelessly beautiful thing he’d ever seen, his battle buddy, dressed in just a skirt and black bra, her head thrown back, her back arched. She wiped tears from her eyes. “Do you know where I am right now? Fuck’s the matter with you?”

He hummed warmly against the crook of her neck. It wasn’t an answer, but he was pretty much willing to shove it out of mind completely for now. “Yeah. I know.” 

“Will, he’s always gonna be around. I pretty much guaranteed that by, you know, the whole basement tavern thing.”

“I know. There’s like, one person out of the whole world that could stand to be that asshole’s friend, and that’s you, so I doubt he’s ever gonna let you go off and live a normal life, you know, without a murderer tailing you all over the place.” He squeezed her tight. “You’re doing God’s work, I guess. Only God could send that man a friend.”

“ _Roberta_  is our octopus.”

Wilhelm reeled. “You  _live_  with him and you have an octopus together? Laura. What the hell did your mama say?”

“It’s cute. She really likes him.” She kissed him up and down his neck and shoulder. “As you’ve already loudly and rudely pointed out, Hugo’s not a people person, just a Laura-and-aquatic-creatures person.”

“Why an octopus? Why live together? Has he just been following every step you’ve made?”

“Because it’s simpler that way. I feel pretty safe at night, knowing he’s around.” She lay against his chest finally. “You asked me about him, you remember that. He found Roberta, she was scared and alone and she took to him so he brought her home. We have to keep two cinder blocks on top of her tank or she gets out and we have to scramble to follow her wet tracks to find her before she dies. One time she didn’t like a toy he brought her so she threw it at him and blasted him with water from her siphon. It was, so far, the best moment of my life.”

“If you told me  _right now_ that Roberta was actually human, I would still completely believe that story. It sounds exactly like the sort of awful shit he’s gonna do to some poor woman someday. Kidnapping her and bringing her back to his lair, keeping her in a tank with cinderblocks weighing the top down, can’t let her escape. Actually, it’s way more believable with a woman. Roberta’s a chick. I believe it.”

She was laughing so hard now that he had to gently muffle the sound to keep neighbors from bitching, but he was more content, now.

“You make me so happy, even when you’re tearing my best friend to shreds.” 

“Really?”

“Yeah, don’t I look happy to you?”

“Did you mean for that to happen? Earlier?”

“I don’t know the right answer.”

Wilhelm got his fingers tangled in her mess of dark hair. “Yes?”

An engine was idling somewhere. It was a noise he was used to, and he guessed she had to be, by now. Enough time passed that he almost guessed she was either regretting her being there or fallen asleep. Just like that, though, she rose above him and kissed him, much like before, but slower. Her legs slid over his beneath the sheets, just as natural as anything, knees hugging his thighs.

“I had no expectations,” she said softly. She reached back to take off her bra and he saw the scar on her arm real good in the light for the first time. That bullet had gone through and through. When the black satin fell to the side, though, his eyes and one of his hands went straight to her chest. She was rolling her hips, and it was working. “I didn’t think about anything, really, just seeing you again. So I dunno. But…” One of her hands covered his, the other on his waist to steady herself. She bit her lip and wouldn’t look him in the eye. “I’ve waited for this for six years. You were my superior. I didn’t want you to get court-martialed, or, God forbid, Aldo shoot you. I wasn’t Jewish. I wasn’t good. I stopped loving anyone or anything in 1942.”

“None of that’s true.” Wilhelm sat up a little straighter against the headboard and held her in place so she wouldn’t slide away. He remembered, in another white flash, coming to in that makeshift infirmary, her hand clutching his, how she gasped and climbed in right next to him when she saw his eyes open. That was pure, simple, and sure as hell was love. “If it doesn’t matter that I’m Jewish, it don’t matter that you’re not. And when weren’t you good? You are.”

He didn’t let her move away. He reached down, his eyes on hers, their lashes almost touching, and guided his cock back inside her again, shivered when she did. Breathing was difficult as the air because stifled and thin all at once. It hadn’t been long since the last time he’d brought a woman home, but here was something different, and it intensified every shell-shocked nerve ending that he had. 

The whole time, every time he kissed her swollen lips or mother-of-pearl skin, every time she passed over him and whispered little curses and praises under her breath, Wilhelm was  _certain_  that this time she wasn’t gonna go away.


	2. Chapter 2

They were all soaked to the bone by the time they reached the old windmill Sakowitz had spotted a few miles back. The weather was starting to turn, though they had enjoyed that Indian summer, and wet plus cold usually meant pneumonia. It smelled almost like a crypt, wet stones, rotting leaves, dust, damp air, but it was a sight better than trudging on through the mud and pissing rain. 

The lieutenant passed out orders,  _Donny, go upstairs and see if the floors are stable; Uti, make yourself useful for once and build a damn fire. Where do you_ think _, son; Parker! See if you can string them nets up, we gotta have some way to hang all this shit dry._  

Donowitz came downstairs, puffing away at a cigarette. “Well, I didn’t die, Lieutenant, so I’m guessin’ about two floors up is pretty safe?”

“That’s delightful, Donny, thank ya very much.” Aldo sat in an ancient, creaking chair and took off his hat. “We got eleven of us now, and ain’t a lot of room in this death trap, so I want two of you on the top floor and four of you on the middle one. Don’t care how, figure it out yourselves.”

Parker had managed to rig old netting like clotheslines, zig-zagging awkwardly, but no one uttered a complaint, just took off their outer layers to hang. Pretty soon it was just a lot of shirtless Jewish men, plus the Lieutenant, plus Parker, plus himself. Hugo Stiglitz took off only his jacket, which was difficult enough, but the rattling of his chains made Parker turn around and face him, which was downright painful. It had, uh, been a while.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to do this earlier,” she said, reaching into her pocket for her tools. She’d picked off his cuffs for him, but he still had a collar around his neck. “Erm, kannst Sie gut englisch? Mein deustch ist nicht perfekt.”

“Will you knock it off with that fuckin’ kraut shit? C’mon, Laura.” Donny interjected.

“Don’t you have a German?” Hugo asked, trying very hard not to look at her in an improper way. Her hair was dripping water onto the cotton undershirt she wore, causing some transparency.

“I, uh, I have an Austrian, but he isn’t very good at breaking locks. I don’t know if he can at all. If you don’t want me to help you, I won’t.”

Hugo took a deep breath, looking past her shoulder. “I would be grateful…I was going to say Private Parker, but I don’t know your rank.”

“Lesson one,” she said, moving so close she may as well have sat in his lap. He jerked upright, very thankful that she was not. “Rank means next to nothing out here. No one is going to call you sergeant, don’t bother calling Wicki corporal, so on.”

For all the fanfare of his prison rescue, the Basterds were actually pretty clumsy with it. When they didn’t find the keys to his cuffs and chains on the dead guards for some reason, they just left. The woman in front of him, the one his hands were begging for him to touch, was using a hair pin and a tiny screwdriver to set him free. 

“I didn’t know there was a woman,” he said in his own awkward attempt at conversation. Then he wondered if that was rude.

“None of the survivors would ever dare tell that it was a girl that held a gun to their heads will Aldo cut a swastika on ‘em. Strictly speaking, I’m not common knowledge.” She stopped what she was doing momentarily and held her hand out. “Specialist Laura Parker.”

Hugo took a deep breath before gripping her hand firmly. “Hugo Stiglitz. But you knew that.”

“Oh, damn.” She was looking down at his hand and picked up the other one, eyeing his wrists. “Those cuffs, I forgot how bad the skin got tore up. I’ll get to that next.”

“Nein, you don’t have to–”

“Ja, I do. You’re not of use to anybody if you get an infection and somebody has to cut your hand off, and everyone here is counting on you being useful. It ain’t all the time we free high-profile prisoners of Nazis. It’ll only take a second.” She took up her little tools again and leaned in so close, he could smell her skin. Wicki, the Austrian, kept looking over at them, so Hugo felt even more adamant in appearing calm and physically unperturbed. “Sorry, I know I probably seem really boorish, but that’s just the way things are, with us.”

“Laura!” Wicki shouted from across the room. “You want to take the top bunk?”

Hugo had no idea what he was talking about, but far preferred the sound of her name in a German lilt.

“Not with you!” she hollered back. “You snore and you  _hit me in the neck_.”

“One time! I said I was sorry!”

Parker was smiling and Hugo was watching her carefully. “Wicki is my battle buddy. I don’t know if you have anything like that, although I doubt you were all that friendly during your military tenure, thus the chains.”

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“Like, partners. We’re responsible for each other. Uti and Ulmer are paired up, too, and Donny and Hirschberg.” She glanced up to his eyes. Her voice lowered. “Now’s the time to say something if you got a problem with them being Jewish.”

“You aren’t?”

“No. Now’s still the time.”

Hugo shook his head. “Not a Nazi.”

“Good.” The collar creaked and gave way, and she pulled it off his neck. She frowned and rubbed at the raw skin, same way she had his wrists. “I’ll pull your guts out through your teeth if you try to hurt any of  _my_  boys.”

He couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Show me how that goes sometime, with someone else’s guts and teeth.”

“I’m sure we’ll find occasion. Let me just do this right quick, then we’re probably going to eat. You must be pretty hungry.” She reached into her nearby pack and summoned up some acrid smelling liquid and bandages, and she was done almost as soon as she’d begun. She smiled again, a lot more stiffly than, and stood, turning away to walk toward the men she actually knew. She stood very close to Wicki, the one he thought was the Bear Jew, and accepted a tin cup of coffee from him.

Hugo wound up on the top floor by himself because, as to be expected, he hadn’t done anything yet to earn their trust. There were ten other people that would definitely see if he tried to slip away. Most of the sounds downstairs had faded to silence by now, as it crept past midnight. Outside, though, the storm was still raging.

* * *

Weeks turned into months and he was now in a tourist village near Nice that was near empty, due to the Occupation and time of year. A little bit at a time, the Basterds quit looking at him like he was about to lead a platoon to their position, with notable exceptions. Most were still uncomfortable around him, but he was fairly uncomfortable around most other people, so that wasn’t much of a loss. He was by himself a lot of the time.

The sleepy little tavern-inn was near deserted when he came downstairs to eat, and he looked around with some unease before he heard a soft, sudden laugh.

“You forgot what day it is?” Parker sat alone in the corner and gestured for him to join her. 

Hugo moved with some enthusiasm, because Parker was the only one he ever had measurable conversations with, and rarely was she ever alone. “They’ve just left, though?”

She smiled up at the ceiling beams. “Most of them, this is their first Hanukkah away from home, from their families. Aldo gave them a few days, considering. They just can’t make it obvious what they’re celebrating. They’re sort of spread out between here and the next.”

“I’m to guess we’re still on duty?” He lit a cigarette for himself and for her. Work didn’t bother him any. 

“And you’d be right.” Parker shrugged. “Poor us.”

“I didn’t expect Wicki to celebrate without you.”

“Still not Jewish.”

“Still your family.”

Parker looked down at her drink fondly. “Yeah, that guy. He’ll be back here sometime whenever I’m trying to go to sleep, drunk out of his mind, telling me about some woman who could unhinge her jaw like a python.”

Hugo sat up straight. “That’s horrible! He should know better than the Americans to speak to you that way.”

“Goddamn, are you just old-fashioned or is this how stuffy Germans really are? When you see I have a problem with something, then you can get all worked up. You should calm yourself down, permanently. It wouldn’t be so hard for them to get along with you if you could just  _relax_.”

“Both,” Hugo stated after a while. “Germans can be stiff, but I’m old-fashioned, and they should speak to you like a lady. The way that they speak to you lacks dignity and respect.” He paused again. “I hate it.”

“D’awww.” She made that awful face she made at Hirschberg whenever she was teasing him, then burst into more laughter at his reaction. “You need about six drinks, Stiglitz. Deux whiskies, s'il vous plaît, Martin.”

“I still hate it.”

“Why do you let it bother you? Why do you even think of me as a ‘lady’?”

“You are joking. You are one.”

Parker shook her head. “No, I’m not a proper lady. It’d help if you just let me blend in.”

“Help me? Or help you?”

Their knuckles brushed together on the table. He saw her eyes flick towards them and watched his own hand move to cover hers. That was interesting. Hers was just tiny, under his. No matter how many times he’d seen her peel scalps off Nazis, it never stopped surprising him. The banter that passed between her and Wicki while their knives cleaved hair and flesh from bone…

The whiskeys came, and she changed the subject.

* * *

It was Christmas day. Lieutenant Raine stayed behind with the rest, but he gave Hugo and Laura a weekend pass, since he allowed the Jewish men to go celebrate Hanukkah. The only thing was, they didn’t know how to do it together.

“Don’t you think this will look weird?” she asked, wrapped in a wool peacoat that was actually appropriate over her floral dress. She  _never_  dressed like a slovenly soldier in the towns and villages they visited. 

“Maybe. Places like these always have somewhere open, though. If we just tell them we got delayed on our way to visit family, that should satisfy them. Mostly they don’t care, I think.” 

“Well, what are we supposed to do, exactly? This feels sad.”

Hugo shrugged. “It is. You are far away from home and the Nazis probably killed my parents. It is not an easy time for people who are alone in the world.”

“Don’t say that,” she rejected immediately. 

“I’m sorry. That was wrong. You’re not alone in the world.”

“Neither are you, asshole.” Her cheeks were reddened and she actually looked angry, pulling him to a stop in the middle of the walkway. “Do you not see me standing next to you? I don’t know about your parents, either, and I’m sorry for that, I’ll help you look, but you’re not alone. You can celebrate Christmas with me every year, no matter where, understand?”

He stood there looking at her for a long time, and it began to snow, so he stepped closer. “Laura, I’m too selfish not to take all of the things you’re trying to give me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” The words just fell out of her mouth, they weren’t in her eyes.

“You want to be my whiskey,” he said. “You want to be Christmas.”

“I don’t understand,” Laura said slowly.

“You replace what those words used to mean to me. You make them things that I can still have.”

“Hugo, you don’t make any sense.” She always said his name the right way, but his bitter suspicion was that she was just used to hearing it that way from Wicki when they spoke of him. 

He breathed out calmly, disrupting the air around him, snowflakes swirling and climbing up to his hair and on his shoulder. He held his hand out for her, no gloves, but still warm. “Laura?”

“Are you…” She cut herself off and stared at his open palm. Her hands fled to her pockets. “Stiglitz, you have to understand, this with the whiskey, with Christmas, you think I’m someone that I’m not.”

“No, I don’t. I just treat you better. No one makes you accept the way that others are to you. You’re right that it’s easier that way, for you to exist in their world and them to let you in it. I just prefer you as you are. I don’t have to think of you any other way. I don’t have to talk to you like you’re nothing to anyone.”

“I’m not a housewife.” She said it very softly, very slowly, but the words still crashed in the air like a sonic boom. 

Now he scoffed, his eyes on the choppy, gray water of the harbor. “No, of course not. You never had to be.”

“Then what the fuck do you want?”

“Just you.” He shrugged. “Or, to be around you. That’s good.”

Laura scoffed and started walking ahead, but looked back at him several times. “Well, come on. We’re getting whiskeys. It’s Christmas. We need a new tradition, and to be far less sober than we are.”

She couldn’t drink like a lady, either. 

The evening was shaped mostly by how much alcohol she consumed, and it never seemed to be enough to her. Laura went from quiet and withdrawn to brightened green eyes and secret smiles. She smoked until her voice started to sound like a foot sliding through ice and gravel, and seemed to regret his company altogether. He didn’t know what to say to make that go away, to make his own stupid words float away so that neither of them had to deal with them any longer.

“Okay, I’ll start.” She said it out of nowhere in a lull in conversation and got his attention immediately. Whatever the hell would make this good again. She cleared her throat, then applied a fresh coat of lipstick. “Okay. I was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, but my family moved to San Antonio, Texas, when I was…I dunno. Two? Around there?”

She seemed to be actually asking for confirmation. He had no way of knowing, so he simply nodded to encourage her to keep on.

Laura beamed at him and leaned over the table. “Noooobody wanted me. In the Basterds. I almost wish I was in the Red Army. They don’t seem to have a problem with female tank commanders and snipers.”

“Fuck them.” Hugo frowned down at his glass, then emptied it. “I want you in the Basterds.”

She snickered and gestured for a top-up to the worn-looking barkeeper. “If you had your way, it would just be you and me, ten thousand rounds, hoofing it across the French Riveria, makin’ ‘em all eat lead.” Then she laughed at herself. “That’s not even true. I don’t know what you want, but that’s probably not actually it, is it?”

“It’s a far more desirable prospect, but it doesn’t matter. Don’t think on it anymore, Laura. It doesn’t matter.”

“Why do you  _hate_  yourself so much?” Her hand crashed down onto his arm, her neck bending, scrutinizing him. She shook him. “Just. Stop.”

He felt himself go blank. His eyes, his face…“Laura.”

“It matters,” she snapped, and her fingernails caught on his sleeve. “What you want matters, what you think matters,  _you_  matter to  _me_. This sounds like a holiday card. I’m not sorry for that!”

Hugo laid his palm carefully across her mouth to keep her from drawing any more attention to them, and looked around. “Come.” He tossed money on the table and wrapped his arm around her waist to keep her straight and upright. “If you want to keep drinking, we’ve got to do it somewhere else. Somewhere private. I probably shouldn’t let you keep on, though. Can you feel your teeth?”

She clacked them together, then nodded. “For the most part. Do you want to get a room?” She gasped loudly. “We can stuff my coat under my dress and tell the innkeeper we’re Mary and Joseph.”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Tell them you’re whoever you want. Come on, Mary.”

“Wouldn’t that be so much better?” Laura struggled to keep up with him, even with one arm around her, so he slowed his steps. She rolled her head on his shoulder. “If we were just normal people, having a baby, stuck in this little town on our way to see family?”

“Do you want children?” 

“Yes, half a dozen of them. I probably never will. I’ll be dead inside a year.”

He chose to ignore that until, with much difficulty, due to her wobbling and his lack of proficiency with the French language, they had a room to stay in for the night. Pushing her gently inside with a hand on her back, he turned her around by her arms and held her still, leaning down. “Do not tell me when you’re dying. Lieutenant made me your problem, remember?”

She nodded, wide-eyed as a scolded child.

“Do you think I would let you die?”

“N-no.”

“D’accord.” It was one of the only things he knew how to say in French.


	3. Chapter 3

“Please,  _please_ , Hugo, please stop!” Laura’s voice was a hoarse whisper. “Please don’t do this. Please.”

“Bitte,” the man on the ground choked, blood bubbling up to the corners of his mouth. Hugo Stiglitz, who crouched down beside him, had severed his spinal cord earlier, and bled him through his pancreas. “Bitte, lass mich sterben. Bitte.”

He was holding his own intestines. Well, not really  _holding_ them, because he, Wolfgang Weber, thirty-six, had no control of his body from the neck down. It was Hugo’s doing. He had pulled the guts from the man’s belly and threaded them around his hands and arms, and currently waited for him to slowly bleed out. 

“Hugo, I’m begging you,” Laura whispered, pure fright in her features. “We  _have_  to get rid of him. Kill him, please, we have to bury the body. No one can see this, please, please.”

“Lieutenant wants to leave behind horrors for the Germans to find,” Hugo responded absently. Drops of dark, arterial blood dripped from his hand down to the bed of yellow maple leaves on the ground. “This man knows what he has done. This is a merciful death compared to what he deserves. Go, Schatzi.”

“What the  _fu_ –Parker, get behind me.”

Hugo recognized Wicki’s voice and typical self-righteous indignation, but did not look up or indicate that he had heard.

“Will, could you just–”

“No. Get behind me now, I’m not telling you a third time. I come this way because I hear you begging for him to stop doing something and it’s somehow worse than I fucking imagined!”

The Major on the ground squelched, his chin trembled and he turned his piercing, terror-filled eyes to Wicki. “Bitte, sir. Bitte.”

Wicki pulled his sidearm from his belt and fired a single round into the Nazi’s forehead. Then he turned the gun on Hugo. “Get up.”

“Will!” Laura pushed the barrel down toward the ground and tried to pull Wicki off to the side. “No, no, don’t do this, Will, please. Help us bury the body.”

“Don’t make me pull rank on you. Go on.” Wicki nudged her away.

“Put that fucking gun down, Wilhelm!” she hissed, offended. “Don’t you dare go around pointing guns at our friends!”

Wicki laughed, bitter, scoffing, never taking his eyes from Hugo’s. “It’s not your job to defend him when he does shit like this. Enough is fucking enough, Laura, quit getting yourself involved. Next thing you know, he’s gonna do the same shit to you. Fuck this, this guy’s never been our friend. He’s a sick fucking dog, Laura.”

“ _I’ve never hurt a woman in my life_ ,” Hugo hissed in their native tongue.

“ _And yet hearing her beg you to stop had no effect. Do you know who goes down when you do this?”_  Wicki jerked a thumb toward Laura, who kept looking between them, bloody hands shaking. 

One of her bare arms haltingly wrapped around Wicki. “Will?”

Lieutenant Raine approached, heavy boots crunching over a carpet of fallen leaves, snapping twigs. Behind him were more men. Hugo could practically feel all those around him gasp and stop breathing. He looked down at the dead Nazi and stood slowly as he watched the lieutenant take a ragged breath.

“Get over here, Parker.” It was low, quiet, deadly. She went without any protest, without a word or a sigh, and Raine wrapped his hand around her upper arm and shoved her along. “Now. Go.”

“Sir, you know she didn’t do it,” Donny piped up, watching Laura stumble down the hill from the sheer force of being pushed. 

The lieutenant pursed his lips and shook his head. “Don’t matter. Hope yer payin’ attention, Stiglitz.”

Laura was standing stock still at attention at the foot of the hill, some thirty feet away, and Raine went after her. 

“Fuckin’ prick.” Donny sneered at Hugo.

It wasn’t always clear, what Raine was shouting and screaming, but it had been going on for a while now. The longer it did, the larger the wall of hate and anger Hugo felt coming from the Basterds. Even Zimmerman, a sexist pig through and through, was casting a death glare his way. 

“ _Move_!” Raine pointed back up the hill and Laura walked twice as fast as she ordinarily would, holding the short shovel that was standard in field kits. She didn’t look at any of them, though all eyes were on her, and Raine brought up the rear. He jabbed a finger toward the cadaver. “Six feet down, six feet long, and I don’t want to  _see_ you stop for nothing, do you understand me, Parker?”

“Yes, sir.” She got down on her knees with that little shovel and started to dig. 

“Stiglitz, you just stand there and watch. Don’t talk to her, don’t even fuckin’ move. If I see you move a cup of dirt, you’re gonna be diggin’ your own grave. Wicki, move out. I want you and three men scoutin’ north. Donny, take the others with you, about two klicks west and back.”

* * *

Five hours later,  Hugo helped Laura lower the bloating corpse into the hole she’d dug. He took the shovel up from where she’d left it spaded into the hard-packed earth and started to fill in the grave, because being trained in a highly-disciplined military corps kept him from disobeying direct orders, but no one had told him he couldn’t help her afterward. She didn’t even move once she was seated, exhausted muscles twitching, so that she was still there when he was done. He sat down beside her and remained silent, but after sensing that she, somehow, still was not angry, Hugo picked her up very gently and hugged her in his lap.

“Es tut mir Lied, Schatzi.” He kissed her forehead, tasted of salt, something he’d never before done. “If he does it to you again, I swear I’ll kill him.”

Laura slapped at him weakly. “No. No more. I don’t even want to hear you  _say_  it.”

“Ja, Schatzi.” Being allowed, Hugo kissed her forehead again, her hair. “Kannst du mir diese Dummheiten verzeih’n?”

“Hugo, I told you.” Her voice was weak, too. “I don’t understand German.”

“D’accord.”

“Don’t make me laugh. I have every reason to be utterly pissed at you.”

“I know. I wasn’t trying to be funny. I’m not funny. I’m surprised you even let me talk to you now. How does it hurt?”

Laura just shook her head on his shoulder. “That’s not useful to anyone. I really, really want to go soak in the water and then go to sleep for the next ten days.” She winced when she heard Raine’s voice.

“You done?”

“Yes, sir.”

Raine looked over the grave and then back to where the two of them sat nearby. hands on his hips. “Seems ‘s though I didn’t quite get through when I told ya since you’s so close to Stiglitz, he’s  _your_ responsibility. I think I made it clear just now, y’ look like shit, but let me be absolute crystal for you two dumbasses: Now on, Stiglitz is your battle buddy, and you’re his, so on and so forth.  _Teach him_  what that means. Y’all are dismissed, get the hell away for a while, signal if y’all find something.”

Laura rose slowly to her feet, knees wobbly. “Yes, sir.”

Hugo couldn’t summon up more than a nod, just followed after her, refusing to let her carry her own things. Guilt was tearing through his insides like glass, and part of him still couldn’t understand what he had done wrong. He was familiar with being punished for something a fellow soldier had done, but Raine should have known better than to pick on the smallest and most vulnerable of them. Weakening her physically opened them all for attack.

“I’ll keep watch, Schatzi,” he told her when they reached the slow-moving river.

She breathed sharply through her teeth. “Hugo? You have no idea how much I hate to ask you this, but I can’t lift my arms over my head. Can you please help me take this off?”

He lowered his gun and then himself to the ground, motioning for her to follow. He frowned, unlacing her boots. “What do you think I will do to you? There is nothing sexual about this situation. You’re in a great deal of pain and I’ve caused it.”

“I said that I hated to ask, not that I thought you were going to toss me down in the weeds and fuck me silly.”

“Well, I won’t.” Hugo tossed her boots a little too far out of habit, but could retrieve them easily. 

“Laura?”

“Shit,” she breathed. Wicki approached, but she pointed him away. “I’m okay. We’ll talk later. Yes, he’s helping me out of my clothes, you can go be mad somewhere else, I’m going to bathe.” 

“Did you know Aldo reassigned me with Mike? That’s his fault too, right?” Wicki took a knee and lit a cigarette. 

Laura groaned. “What do you want me to do, Will? Kill him?”

“It’d be a start.” Wicki looked at him, now. 

“Will, I love you, I do, but if you’re looking to make things better for me right now, don’t have me put up with this. I just don’t want to right now. You’re king of the battle buddies, all right? There’ll never be another battle buddy for me.”

Whatever passed between them next did not register to Hugo, because he had never even heard her speak about love before, and so freely she offered it to someone who didn’t deserve it. Then he had to decide why it bothered him. Laura was not a calculated risk he was taking; he knew there was no fairytale featuring the two of them. 

She was his first friend in a long time and it was obvious to at least himself that he loved her in that way a quite a lot. She didn’t compound it or make it complicated, either, so it wasn’t. His closest friend, a precious commodity in the totalitarian times they lived. Someone who looked forward to seeing him and he looked forward to seeing, too. 

“He didn’t mean to,” Laura said, her voice climbing loudly enough to snap Hugo’s attention. 

Wicki had moved much, much closer. “I think it was pretty deliberate, and he just didn’t care about the outcome.”

“Leave,” Hugo bit. “ _You criticized me for not listening to what she wanted and here you are, not leaving when she asked you to.”_

Laura sat further back in his lap, her head in front of his. “Will, can you at least just make me some coffee or something, if what you want is to help? Don’t sit here arguing with him. I’m tired and I’m hurting and I’m really fucking embarrassed and I’d really like it if you could do this for me, as my friend.”

Hugo remained utterly still, staring at the back of her neck while he listened to Wicki’s angry footfalls fade away. The way she was sitting almost made him break out in a sweat. He still had to help her undress. 

“I’ll move,” she said, doing so carefully. She didn’t meet his eyes. “It’s fine. Don’t start, don’t spiral into self-loathing. You don’t see a lot of women and I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighed and moved her arms as best she could so he could peel the dirty undershirt she wore from her body. It was so big that he thought it likely belonged to Donny, whose clothes she frequently took. All it did was emphasize how much smaller she was, and he felt a stone sinking through his stomach and to his knees.

“It’s not because I don’t see many women. I feel like I’ve slept with half the women in France since I got out of prison.” He rubbed circles into her shoulders with his thumbs. Maybe that’d feel better. 

“How come your English is so good?”

There was the Laura he knew, shifting focus and attention from what he was saying.

“Lots of German children learn to speak English. My parents encouraged me. I wanted to study.”

“So how’d you wind up killing your way through the Gestapo?” When he said nothing for a while, she leaned back against him again. “Come on, Hugo. After what I saw you do today and what happened after, you know it won’t matter to me.”

“I was drafted.” He shrugged. “The Nazis are wrong. I saw them do much worse things to innocent people. I let it eat me alive because I did not stop them, and then I did stop them. I didn’t care if I died anymore, just as long as they died. I chose the Gestapo because I got a very bad beating and whipped for insubordination by a Gestapo officer. I planned on working my way out.”

She reached for his hand. He could tell it was a knee-jerk reaction. He could feel the rawness of the skin on her hands and the blisters that had formed and he was filled with anger yet again. Raine had seemed like a reasonable man before. For a while they sat that way, inadvertently sharing a sunset. Laura got up eventually and he turned away so that she could strip off the remainder of her clothes and wade into the still-icy waters.

* * *

During the summer, they slept outdoors as often as they could. It saved a hefty amount of coin they could use on rooms in the winter, when available, so they wouldn’t freeze. Hiking it several miles a day with forty or so pounds on their backs, everyone was too warm, too sweaty, and prone to bitching. Something…odd,  _very_ odd, was taking place among the Basterds, and Hugo couldn’t ask Laura, because she was at the center. 

As far as he could tell, some of the more observant ones, that goddamn Wicki and Sakowitz, were just averting their eyes. It was less than senseless to attempt talking to either one of them, not that he truly wanted to, and no one was mentioning it, so Hugo was left to piece together the limited information he had and look a little bit harder.

When he  _did_  figure it out, it made him a bit sick.

It was Laura and Raine. 

Aldo Raine was not a person he could have ever, even if he wanted to, pictured kissing another human being, let alone Laura. Sweet Laura, the one Raine had been so unfair to, ever since the grave-digging incident. She was sitting across his lap,  _far_  from camp, and Raine would twist his fingers around waves of her thick dark hair and kiss her deeply. 

Unbelievable. Hugo watched them through the scope of his gun–he thought he’d spotted an enemy–and considered firing a round above their heads.

“Hiya.”

Hugo lowered his weapon and there stood Donowitz, his arms behind his back, wearing a smile that was just barely covering a swell of rage. “What?”

“Turn around and go back to camp,” Donny said slowly. “No one put you on patrol. Quit watchin’ her every move, ya fuckin’ pervert.”

Eyes wide, Hugo took a surprised backward step. “You know?”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ know. Go back to fuckin’ camp, you stupid goddamn kraut, what’d I say?”

“ _That_  is wrong, and you are his second in command,” Hugo fumed. Donny may have a temper problem, but Hugo Stiglitz’s world was a violent shade of red that shifted, flowed, ebbed, but never went away. “He shouldn’t be fraternizing with anyone in his command, you know that. In the German army, it’s akin to rape. Even in the Red Army.”

“You wanna go there, Stiglitz?” Donny’s voice rose with incredulity. “If it was you gettin’ your dick wet, it’d all be different, but you’re gonna stand here and say shit like Aldo’s raping Laura, is that what I’m hearing right now?”

“You’ve no right to speak of her that way, none of you do, it’s disgusting,” Hugo hissed. “Specialist Parker–”

Donny chortled joylessly, a disconcerting sight. “Specialist Parker, huh? It’s not Shotsy this time, huh? Fuck’s sake, Stiglitz, she’s a woman. A smart one, too. They’re not gettin’ married, they’re fucking. If she didn’t catch shit constantly about the weird shit you do,  _maybe_  she would’ve wanted to bone you instead. Maybe. Turn around. Go.”

It went on that way for weeks, and they were actually pretty damn good at covering their tracks. No one on earth would guess from the way Raine dug in with Laura that the two of them had anything between them. Donny was apparently their guard and go-between, and what that guy got out of all of it was a mystery for Hugo. 

He just desperately wanted for it to stop. He started keeping her so close under his surveillance that he  _knew_  she must’ve realized, but neither of them mentioned it. She grew agitated, lashed out, even, and, one day, Wicki tapped him on the elbow and led him off. He was curious enough to go along. The Austrian went so long without saying anything that he almost thought it was a chance patrol, but, at length, Wicki looked at him, for once without a stony face.

“ _You need to let go and let her be an adult_.” 

Hugo balked at him. “ _Am I the only one with a moral center in this entire outfit? He’s her superior. He’s in a position of authority over her.”_

 _“And I’m telling you that it doesn’t matter. I understand about Laura, I do. I can’t stand the sight of you, I don’t understand anything else of your thoughts or motivations, because, frankly, you’re a monster, but I understand why you love Laura. Maintain composure, leave it be.”_ Wicki leaned against a tree. “ _She is happy.”_

“ _I would believe that if it were you,”_  Hugo responded. “ _I would believe she wasn’t being hurt if it were you.”_

Wicki tilted his head at him. “ _That’s actually a decent thing of you to say, Stiglitz. This happens sometimes. They will stop again. Then they’ll start again, sometime later. Or they won’t. It doesn’t matter, either way, it isn’t your choice to make, so let them have whatever it is that they have. Aldo is not hurting Laura. No one would let him.”_

“ _She is kind and good. Enough to make a friend out of a monster. Does that not seem delicate to you?”_

Wicki smirked, shaking his head absently. “ _No. To me, that seems incredibly strong, and, as you put it, kind and good. She’s my great friend, too. I would never allow him to harm Laura.”_ He turned as if to leave, sighed, and faced him again. “ _I’ll say this once. The way the Americans talk to each other is how they keep themselves going. They care about each other. It wouldn’t matter if she was as pretty as she is or if she looked like Sakowitz. It would be the same. The fact that they don’t treat her like an outsider is a good thing. You don’t have to understand it.”_

_“Whatever you think, Wicki, I have not touched her. I aspire to nothing.”  
_

The other man laughed, but kept on walking. “ _Then you’re an idiot.”_


	4. Chapter 4

Wilhelm was dreaming and slowly becoming aware of this fact. Bastille Day, 1943, when the Basterds were holed down with members of the French Resistance. Those frogs actually did live like every second was their last, and the concrete underground bunker reeked of stale cigarette smoke and spilt red wine. Guy sat next to Laura on the piano bench while she played, his arm around her back. Had it actually happened that way? Had he been jealous then?

No, it was Stiglitz on the bench with her, and he couldn’t play for shit. His hands were hesitating on the keys, and Laura was giggling and moving his fingers to the proper places to form chords. She was drunk; Stiglitz never was. When he got frustrated and gave up, his fingers making fists against the yellowed piano keys, Laura just laughed harder and kissed him. That was the first time Wilhelm had ever seen her kiss Stiglitz.

He was woken up by pure agitation at that memory, which had never sat well with him before, and felt quite awful now. Laura was no longer snuggled beside him in the bed, as he’d woken to find her a few times during the night, but he could hear her making coffee in the kitchen. Wilhelm slid on a pair of dark brown pants, was reminded instantly of the wool ones he had in France, and retrieved his beautiful woman. He closed his arms around her from behind, growled playfully in her ear, and carried her into the other room, where there lived an upright he had hardly touched since moving in.

Laura laughed like champagne bubbles, tickling his ears and filling him with a warm feeling. “Guten Morgen, Liebling.”

Wilhelm hummed dark against the nape of her neck. “Play something for me, Hasi.”

“Hasi? That’s a new one.” She turned to kiss him. “What’ll you like, then? I’m quite rusty.” Her fingers moved like a ballerina across the stage, just plucking out a random tune, before settling on Over the Rainbow. “Darling, that coffee’s gonna burn.”

“I got it, don’t worry.” He moved out from underneath her and back to the kitchen. “Goddamn, this feels good.”

“The only thing missing is an octopus!”

He scoffed loudly so she’d still hear. “I’ll get you a dog! Or do you want a cat?”

“We’ll negotiate after breakfast! Why don’t you come play and I’ll cook?”

“Uh…” Wilhelm picked a white mug with a menorah for her. “Listen, you know you’re my favorite girl, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

“You ‘member how you cooked once and gave Hirschberg food poisoning? Then we never let you cook again?”

“Pfft, the rest of you were fine.”

“I’ll make breakfast, sweetheart, you just keep playing.” Granted, he wasn’t the best cook either; Andy was the preferred chef back in the day. “Hey, you said you’d been talking to Smitty? How the hell is he? Shit, I haven't heard from him in ages.”

Laura’s fingers paused on the keyboard. “They’re doing great! Mad for each other, beautiful together.”

“Oh, him and Omar? They’re still together?”

“Yes! They want to have a baby.”

“Did you explain that’s not physically possible, fun though it may be to try?”

“Of course they know that.” She appeared around the corner now, still looking incredible in one of his button ups. “It’s not going to be easy. They’re looking into adoption. I’m really hoping for them. I know it'll be difficult. . .” She grew ecstatic when she found the box on the table. “Oh, my God. I forgot you were an optometrist. You were the one who had the most boring occupation. Or are you just a killer who collects the glasses of his victims for trophies?” Laura took several pairs out of the box and tried them all on. “Do I look sophisticated or just. . .not?”

Wilhelm snickered and took the box away from her, set it on top of the refrigerator where she couldn't reach. “You look like a mostly-naked woman trying on a bunch of donated glasses. Those in particular make your eyes look like they’re three times the normal size.”

“Why the fuck weren’t you an optometrist for the Army?” She set aside the pair she was wearing. “You would have been much safer taking care of everyone’s eyes.”

“I barely finished school before my intake. They were, uh, not very accommodating about the whole licensing thing, so I just got thrown in doing other shit. Jew foreigner, and all.” Wilhelm dismissed the uncomfortable nature of those thoughts and let them drift through the open window. None of that mattered anymore, or at least for now it didn’t. He’d dreamt about France again, back when Laura smelled of earth and rain rather than vanilla and jasmine.

There was a large gap he couldn’t account for in the development of their. . .well, whatever. Then, all across France and back, they’d cleaned guns together, drank horrible, metallic coffee together, lots of things. Their choices had been limited and they still had not, at least technically, chosen each other. How did it happen, now, that their choices were nearly unlimited, and this is where they found themselves? He didn’t even know how to ask that question or how it should be worded.

“Why are you so quiet?” she whispered.

“Did you ever. . .” He frowned. Damn, there was no good way to bring this up. “You and Aldo, you weren’t serious, but he was your CO. You said--”

“Last night, it wasn’t smart to say that I just never felt like you were interested.” Laura ran her finger over his stubble.

“Everyone was interested.”

Now she smacked him lightly. “Because of my gender.”

“I’m not even gonna deny that, because that was the truth at first, but you had a lot of hearts on a string, Laura.”

“Well. Now we’re all rotated out and let loose in the real world.” Her voice was a slow, melancholy shamble.

“Are you gonna let me make you happy?” As he said the words, Wilhelm looked down at her legs and then over the big and too-empty apartment she’d filled just by walking in with him. In all the unoccupied spaces where he’d just assumed, years before, he would eventually fill out, he could imagine her things, her touch.

“Yes.”

He’d so expected that she would protest, that she would insist she was not worth it, that it took him off guard for a brief pause. “Really?”

Laura stood beside him so that she could properly look at him. “Do you think you’ll be happy that way, too?”

“Yeah.” It was no stretch or pull. He didn’t think very hard about it, but it was still the truth. There was no one in the world he knew better. It was definitely worth trying, at the very least. She was no stranger and this was no gamble. Laura was one of the only constants and sureties he’d ever known. He could, with a fair amount of accuracy, guess a lot of what she would do or say. “All I could think of before I called you was if you were warm and safe, and I wanted to be the one who made you warm and safe.”

"Will?"

"No one else ever calls me that, you know."

"Of course not, you've always been only my Will. I was going to ask if. . ." She joined her fingers to form a triangle. "Was it because of Hugo?"

He felt his back tense up. His head tilted forward as he considered her question. He knew exactly what she meant. "And Aldo, to a much lesser extent. I was worried about you all the time. I wanted my battle buddy back. And I. . .I guess. It may still be like that. I've never seen someone so determined. Are you still with him?"

"No," she said softly, unable to hide completely the way his question had stung. 

Wilhelm sighed heavily. "Does  _he_  know that, Laura? Be honest with yourself about that guy, just this one time. Does Stiglitz  _know_  that you're not together? Or are you just looking the other way, still?"

She shook her head, but it was a dismissal, not a response. "Where are the plates?"

"It's  _that_  shit, that right there," Wilhelm grabbed two plates from the shelf without looking because his eyes were locked onto hers.

"I don't know." Laura shrugged. "I don't know exactly what he thinks all the time. I think he believes that he doesn't have to be  _with_  me to be with me, if that makes sense."

"It's never made sense." Once he had the eggs on plates, Wilhelm went back to Laura and tucked her against himself nice and close. "Do you just feel bad for him?"

"In many ways, yes. He doesn't have anyone else. His parents 'disappeared' sometime around his capture. I helped him to look and then I helped him file for their death certificates, and so on. There's no one else." She shrugged again. "I care about him, I love him to death. He is so much better than what you've chosen to see in him. Does this really need to turn into the millionth argument we have about Hugo Stiglitz? You don't have to like him, you don't have to be his friend--"

"Do I not, though? Listen to me, Laura, and I mean listen, because I know you at least like to pretend that I'm joking or speaking out of pure anger when I say this sort of shit to you, but I'm not. I'm bein' a hundred percent fucking sincere. You listening?" Wilhelm kissed the top of her head when she nodded. "I  _believe_  he'd kill me to keep you to himself."

"No," she breathed. "Don't you think I would've noticed if, in these last few years, people were dropping dead left and right? He knows that I'm in Jersey with you because I told him last night why I was rushing out the door. I don't lead him on. It bothers me that you think that."

"Oh, but I don't." Wilhelm leaned back to look at her, eyebrows raised. "I think he's delusional. I think he can convince himself of anything."

"I told you, you don't have to be friends. You don't have to like him. We don't have to talk about him."

"I tried that, once, but it never made it  _stop_."

She grabbed his hands and straightened her back. "Okay. What will make you feel better, short of shutting my best friend out of my life?"

Wilhelm scoffed. "I don't want you to live with him, for one. That's odd, you know that. That sends exactly the wrong message to Stiglitz, especially considering everything that went down between the two of you--I was about to list a beginning and an end, but I have no idea when it really started or ended with you two. If you don't want to live alone. . .shit, move in here. I want you, I can definitely live with you, I want you. . .we've lived together in shitty hotels in France, abandoned buildings--a windmill, more than once--and out in the elements in the middle of fucking Nazi France."

Laura looked a little shocked, her pretty lips parted. She moved quietly over to the kitchen table to sit down. "And why wouldn't it be any less odd for me to live with you? You said goodbye to me and, as far as I know or can tell, you just forgot that I even existed."

"No." Now anger crept into his tone. "That--"

"Okay, okay." She held up her hand and ducked her shoulders a bit. "There's no need to get upset, I'm sorry."

"You know this is good, don't you? This is  _good_ , me and you, here. That's the endgame, Laura, there's an endgame, not just aimlessly fucking around the States. You can have that. If you want it. You can have a life. We're not there anymore. I don't know what stopped me, I can't put a finger on it, but I sure as shit wish that it hadn't. Maybe it was him, and Aldo. I don't know, but it was a mistake I've always regretted." He hated that he was trying to plead some sense into her again, and hated that she was right, that they shouldn't have started to argue about that psychotic asshole again.

After a lengthy pause, Laura looked up at him with a smile. "I said I'd let you make me happy. . .can you describe the endgame to me, in detail?"

He sat across from her now, but reached for her hand. "I'm sorry about the depot, but that doesn't mean I ever wanted you out of my life. It's the opposite, I want you here. I missed you all the time. I owe you  _everything_. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you and how much you love me. I love you, too."

Laura swallowed hard. "You would've done the same thing."

"Yeah, because I love you. You didn't give up, because you love me. You refused to follow orders and went AWOL to save my fucking life. You're damn right I would've done the same. I don't even fully understand how the hell you did it, and I was probably just gonna die anyway, but you never gave up on my life."

She turned her head and wiped her eyes with the hand he wasn't holding onto like his continued existence depended on it. Her voice was high, cracked, congested. "Um, I. . .I'd rather not think about that. It wasn't good, I. . .I don't know what I would've done. I just don't know."

"The endgame is I just wanna be with you, every day, forever." Wilhelm looked down at their hands and laughed softly. "I sound stupid when I say shit like that, but fuck it. I love you. I don't wanna miss you anymore. I don't wanna wave goodbye again. I love you. Help me here, I'm floundering. Don't let me sound stupid."

"It's not stupid and you just sound sexy."

"Do you want to? Don't feel like you  _have_  to. I'm not like him like that."

She tilted her head, her question apparent.

Wilhelm squeezed her hand and tried his best just to  _speak_. "Shit, Laura. Marry me. Someday. I don't see the life I want with anybody else. Never have. You know me well enough to know I would never ask or suggest it if it wasn't dead serious. As you've pointed out thousands of times, I'm old as hell. I know what I want."

"I could marry you today. Marriage doesn't mean anything to me." She pointed her eyes to the table, at its scattered contents, keys, newspapers, etc. "You know, I accepted my own death when I was twenty-one, I just expected it every day, and that's why I've just gone from place to place with--with him. It's all. . .impermanent. If everything can end or just go away any second, why do I have to pretend that all of this is normal to me?"

"All of what? Dammit, Laura, you think that way because, and I know, I know, it's  _hard_ , but you think that way because you're a veteran. You were brave enough to sign up for all of it--I didn't, Stiglitz didn't, you may've been the only one who volunteered to the Armed Forces, and the Armed Forces didn't even want you. It wasn't even an American war when we got there, the whole country was screaming about how it wasn't our fight, and you said 'Bullshit'. They tried to turn you away and you said 'Bullshit'.

"They tried to scare you off by torturing you for weeks at a time in goddamn SERE training, and that's why I even met you, because you basically told everybody to get fucked and showed them you're goddamn Laura Parker. SERE specialist, Aldo called you. I didn't know what the hell that meant. I didn't know I was standing by the woman I'd love. I didn't think I'd last long, either. Here I was, thinking 'this bitch is gonna get me killed', and you were there to show us how to handle ourselves if we got caught.

"There's nothing impermanent about you, Laura. There's nothing impermanent about your life. One day, we will die, but not your name. You're a Basterd, Laura. You're gonna be remembered forever. You and me and the rest, even that one that died about twenty minutes in. You're so  _young_. I was years older than you are now back  _then_. That's why I know what you feel, almost exactly what it's like, but I also know you have another fifty or sixty or, hell, seventy years left ahead of you and you're never, ever gonna look back and wonder if you did the right thing by joining, by doing what we did, but you  _will_  regret what you don't do now that you're free to live the rest of your life the way you want. Living with a maniac and an octopus, okay, interesting, to say the least, but you get to expect  _more_  out of life than that. I do. You get to. You deserve it." Wilhelm set both elbows down on the table and leaned over them. "Do what you want. I mean that. But don't tell yourself that there's no meaning in things that are meaningful. I know you better. If you don't want to marry me, that's as may be, I can accept that, but I won't accept you saying shit like this."

"Will--"

" _Nope_." He lit two cigarettes and passed one to her. "Don't argue, you know that won't work. Too goddamn old and set in my ways, et cetera, et cetera."

"You  _are_  old." She held it, but didn't smoke, too focused on the wheels that were turning in her mind. "How the hell come no one ever took the chance and married you before?"

"I was working on it in Austria, and, damn, wouldn't you know it? Goddamn anti-Semitism." He snapped. "Same thing in America. Even the Jews didn't want me."

"Why?" She looked angry now, offended. "That's such bullshit! That's horrible!"

"Yeah, well." Wilhelm shrugged and leaned back finally. "Like I said, I don't see the life that I want with somebody else, so it hasn't exactly been eating me up."

"You are unfairly good-looking, nice, a war hero, a doctor of some sort, smart, funny, polite, all sorts of good qualities. That doesn't make sense to me." She was blinking away tears again, smoking furiously now.

"Between us, you're the catch." He hazarded a sideways smile in her direction. "Please don't make me move to Queens."

"I-I don't know," Laura stammered. "I want children, and I think you should think about that before you start making your mind up. I want to work until I have children. I won't force Hugo out of my life. I don't mind if you want me to convert to Judaism, but, I have to tell you, my heart isn't really in anything to do with God or gods or goddesses. I just want you to know, it's not something I can change my mind about--maybe God'll come to me later in life, maybe not. I don't really. . .I don't really believe. I want to wait."

"Hell, I want kids. A dog, a cat, something. Just want a life. Don't want a Hugo. I don't want him to be a problem, and I don't have any control over him and he isn't gonna listen to me."

"I'll take care of him."

"I  _know_  I'm gonna regret asking you this. He wanted you so much. Then he got you. How come he never married you?"

She laughed now. "Yeah, you'll regret asking if I answer that completely. What you need to know is we never did. Are you jealous of him?"

"Oh, absolutely, in all sorts of ways. I'm just not crazy."

"Well," she stood and went to plate cold eggs. "He was desperately jealous of you."


	5. Chapter 5

"What the fuck are we doing?"

"I'm so fuckin' hungry I could eat this rock."

"Where's Lt. Raine? He told us he'd be back with them by now."

"If they're all dead, we're dead, too, we just don't even know it yet."

"They ain't fuckin' dead, you dumb bastard! What's the matter with you? Lieutenant's coming back, and he's bringing them with him."

"Fuck. Shit."

"Man, I'm starving."

"I'd give anything for some French pussy."

These were bits that Hugo heard clearly. For the most part, he ignored the Basterd children as they complained on the floor below. Beside him were three empty packs of cigarettes, a half-empty flask of cognac, his canteen, and five hundred rounds of ammunition. He was told, two days before, to keep first watch for enemies and for the return signal of the squad Raine had taken. During this time, Hugo never gave up watch.

Something simply did not feel right. Sure, he felt like shit because there was nothing to eat after the previous afternoon. Sure, he felt even worse because he didn't sleep. This was another blanket of wrong, however, and Hugo prayed silently that keeping constant vigilance would bring them back. Bring back his friend.

"Hey." Wicki rapped his gun against the stone wall behind him to get his attention. " _I'm taking over. Go and rest. If you sleep at least an hour or two, you can come back and stare out the window until you see spots._ "

Hugo regarded the other man with a cool and blank countenance. He barely blinked, and he did not seem inclined to speak. There was such a terrible intensity that pervaded Stiglitz and made him almost unbearable, because he simply did not seem like a human being. " _I don't want to sleep. You can watch another position, now leave."_

 _"You are just determined to be the absolute goddamn worst, aren't you?"_  Wicki rubbed his face hard, exhaling even harder.

_"I'm not. You're distracting me and I don't want you here. You aren't the worst fellow in the world, either, but I don't want to talk to you. We aren't friends."_

_"Stiglitz, I'd rather eat ten miles of shit than ever experience the demented levels of obsession and stalking that comes with being your friend."_

Hugo nodded. "Okay."

 _“You're still a German, no matter how many of those men you killed. Like a coward. You didn't do that for Jews. I don't think you give half a piss about Jews. You won't talk to any of us unless it's unpleasant and insulting. You killed the Gestapo officers because it served_ you _, not the greater good.”_   Wicki eyed him bitterly.

 _"I'm sorry that you feel as though you are entitled to whatever it is that you feel entitled to. Has it ever occurred that I may just not want to talk?"_  Hugo rubbed his thumb along the splintery wood on the little crate-turned-table.

 _"The lion's share of us wish we'd never bothered to save your life. You think that you're above those of us that did. Maybe climb down off your fucking cross every now and again and act like you're_ with _us. You can be your own one man Laura Parker fan club, I can't see a woman like her with whatever you are, it doesn't matter, I don't care. If you treated one less person like shit, though, things would be different for you."_

Hugo squinted at him through the dim lantern light for long, tense seconds.  _"If you are honest with yourself, you know that I don't mistreat any of you. I was never going to talk. I don't speak without something meaningful to say."_

_"Do you worship her so goddamn much because she unchained you?"_

_"Do you realise how you're the aggressor? I don't come and bother you, but you come looking for a fight. We would never speak, our paths would never cross, if you would just let it fucking be. You want to assume that I don't want to be relieved of watch just so that I can see her first. You want to assume that I'll do things to her--I'm unsure of your depth of imagination, so I won't use any examples. Why? She is your greatest friend, according to you, so you should know what makes her so comfortable and safe to be near. You could not, if asked right this moment, disclose one single thing that I've done with the intention of harming her, raping her, whatever it is you've conjured in your mind. Jealousy is an unattractive quality."_

Wicki's face contorted.  _"You're the fish she took off the hook, and you're grateful because you think it was mercy. She still has to throw you back into the water."_

 _"Of course she does. Of course she will."_  Hugo smiled abruptly, then started to laugh.  _"Except for Christmas."_

"Hoooly shit." Wicki rubbed his scratchy cheek again, then hit the stone wall with his open palm. " _You're going to wind up killing us all in our sleep, just like you did those Nazis. There is something exceedingly wrong with you.”_

Hugo flashed him another smile.  _"Do you want me to tell you what the problem is? What's 'wrong with me'?"_

Wicki sneered at him.  _"Please, go ahead."_

_"For whatever reason, it doesn't matter to me, you're too much of a coward to pursue her yourself. You can't take it out on the lieutenant, for what terrible things he's doing to her, so you come slinging words around at me. Have you ever seen them together, Wilhelm?"_

Their floor grew quiet. Wicki sat up slowly, then rose to his feet and took a few impassive steps closer.  _“Stiglitz, what are you talking about?”_

Hugo actually dropped his gun, he was laughing so hard.

Wicki kicked the bottom of his boot, just to regain his attention.  _"Tell me what you know."_

 _"Get the fuck out of here,"_ Hugo said through all his snickering. He waved his hand in dismissal. " _Go on."_

Now, Wicki grabbed hold of the back of his chair and looked down at him. There was not a single shred of worry or fear in Stiglitz's eyes, there never was. Wicki spoke slowly, quietly. His own face had blanched.  _"I don't want to touch you, Stiglitz, but I will. Are you listening? I don't care how difficult you make it, I'll drag you the rest of the way up this fucking windmill and I'll throw you off. No one would miss you. Maybe Laura, for a while, but the thing about Laura is she's buried three of her friends so far and knows how to turn grief out of her mind. There would be no one else in this_ entire _world that would give a shit that Hugo Stiglitz was dead. If Aldo's. . .if he's. . .hurting her, really hurting her, you need to tell me."_

_"I should think it was very obvious. What else is there to know? I've accidentally spotted them, once kissing, once in the act."_

If relief and annoyance could marry, they would be perfectly illustrated on Wilhelm Wicki's face just then. He shoved away from the German and sighed.  _"Fucking prick. What kind of man are you, acting as though Laura's being truly abused for a laugh?"_

Hugo's eyes flashed, his entire visage switched back to that hollow depth of intensity. His chair squeaked as he leaned forward.  _"You already knew. You knew what I thought of it, and still think of it. Even if she is willing, which I know that she is, he is her commanding officer. It is disgusting, inappropriate, and inherently abusive. This is no joke, and I was only laughing at you. You told me to leave it be."_

Wicki scoffed.  _"Would you give a shit if she weren't a woman?"_

_"Would I give a shit if Raine was fucking, say, Private Hirschberg?"_

That was not a pleasant mental image.  _"Yes, for a horrible example. He's Hirschberg's commanding officer. If they were just as gay and fucking all the time like Utivich and Maycroft had been, and ignore your natural distaste for anything different from you, would you even give one single damn?"_

_"Yes, and not because they're homosexuals. That's just another assumption of yours. Officers are to protect us, not coerce us into sucking their cocks. He would be taken advantage of, just like Laura is, and, although I don't know the kid very well, it would still be appalling to me and I would still wish to defend him from harm, as my fellow soldier."_

_"You said it would be better if I were fucking her, that you'd believe she wasn't being hurt. Well, I outrank her. Technically."_

Hugo blew out a huff of derisive laughter. “ _You are an enlisted man. You are not even part of any proper chain of command. Even if you wanted to do something sick or demented with her, you'd never have the guts go through with it, and besides, my Schatzi could crush you."_

_“That she could. Shit, is that a truck?"_

Both men scrambled and felt ashamed that no one had been on watch this entire time. It was a German transport truck. Hugo grabbed for his gun, but Wicki held his shoulder.

_“The headlights are off. It's them."_

They rushed down the stairs of the windmill and filed outside with the others. The truck was. . .worse for wear. When it rolled to a stop, Aldo Raine, wearing singed clothing, jumped out from the passenger's side and stomped around. He yanked Ulmer out of the driver's side and dragged him to stand. The young man looked absolutely horrified.

"I'm fissin' to beat your ass like a fucking rented mule!" Aldo slammed the poor fellow repeatedly against the bonnet of the vehicle.

Looking closely, Hugo could see that Ulmer's eyebrows were nearly burned clean off. He would have left, if this were not such a bizarre and unexpected event. "Lieutenant, sir, I swear, that was  _not_  a good plan to begin with! There was no way I could--"

"Oh, don't even tell me yer undermining my strategy!" Raine's accent was so thick as to almost sound like a foreign language altogether.

As amusing as all of this was, there came sinking that blanket of unknown dread and panic. Four of them had gone, and only two had emerged from the truck. Hugo left the cluster of men, his feet moving independently of his own body. His hands did the same as they opened up the back. It was almost too dark to see, but there were two bodies, immobile, wrapped up in bloody bandages.

Hugo felt himself growing sick and gagged. He hadn't eaten anything, so nothing came up, but it was another horrible sensation that wracked his body. He was light-headed, but before he even knew it, he was climbing into the vehicle, his boots making resounding thuds. On one side was Donowitz.

On the other, there was Laura, and nothing could describe the way that despair and loneliness crushed him, save perhaps the way all the breath left his lungs, as though someone had punched him, hard.

She was barely even dressed. She had on a pair of trousers that definitely were not hers. She had left with only dresses, to play her part. Her midsection was wrapped up in bandages and she wore only a dark grey bra to strap her breasts in. He covered her in his jacket before kneeling over her body, his own convulsed uncontrollably. His head kept shaking from side to side and he was hardly able to keep himself upright. This was tragic. This was  _wrong_. This was undignified.

 _Now_  he was alone in the world. She would never stand beside him again, there would be no more whiskies, no more Christmases, just this unfathomable void he struggled to stop from swallowing him whole. He coughed, a reflex of his lungs, desperate for air. Had he been holding them empty? He had to bite his fist to stop himself from howling this devastation to echo through the truck, through the trees, and into the cool and unforgiving wind. As his teeth sunk in, his eyes filled with hot tears.

Hugo coughed again and touched her pale, blood-speckled cheek.

"Get the  _fuck_  offa me!" Donowitz shoved him weakly. His voice was unusual, too, with a peculiar droopy quality.

"What happened to Laura?" Hugo wiped at his eyes again.

Donny had pulled himself up against one of the benches and he even managed to sneer. "She got shot, you stupid son of a bitch. And burned. Maybe. I don't remember shit after that big Serbian woman. . ." He was panting with exertion just from sitting up and saying those few words. He touched his own bandaged ribs and looked down at them. "Well,  _fuck_  my mouth. What the fuck happened to you, huh? Why you looking like that?  _Don’t_  lean on her like that, you kraut dipshit! You're gonna pop her fuckin' stitches, you're gonna hurt her!"

It took a moment for this to sink in, and when it did, Hugo was scrambling once again. He got behind her with stiff but quick movements and lifted her up enough so that he could seat himself underneath her upper body. She sighed and turned her head and he realised that she  _was_  breathing, slowly and unevenly. He ran his hand over her hair several times, unable to truly process the emotional gambit he had just paced through. He kissed her wherever his lips fell and reached down to take one of her limp hands in his.

Donny wobbled, trying to stand and failing. His lip was curled. "Get the fuck outta here with that shit. I ain't playin' with you. Get off her, quit touching her like that, it ain't right. She can't even tell you to get off herself. What's the matter with you?"

Hugo paid him no mind, as he usually did. He spoke in rapid, whispered German, thanks and praises that she survived something so horrific, promises that this would never come to pass again. That was how the rest found them, once Lt. Raine was done chewing Ulmer a new asshole.

Donny looked at the lieutenant and shrugged. "Can you believe this fuckin' guy? I told him to get lost."

"Sheee doesn't have a clue what's goin' on. I pumped her up with some extra morphine, kinda regretting that at the moment, hopin' it wasn't too much." Aldo just acted as though Hugo simply wasn't there. "Y'all get Donny inside, me and Stiglitz will bring in SPC Parker." Once they were alone again, Aldo smacked Hugo's hands away from her and held her face in both of his own. They were burnt in some places, dirty. "You gonna be all right. You're gonna be just  _fine_ , honey."

That look in the man's eyes was unmistakable. He took her off Hugo like it just didn't matter at all, and Hugo felt himself slip a little further on that precipice.

"Stiglitz, get outta here and guard them doors until I come out." Aldo was stroking her hand with his thumb, had her forehead tucked under his chin, so he could look at her. It was  _shockingly_  intimate and immensely uncomfortable to witness, and Hugo was almost over the edge, looking at this other man and how perfectly he was treating Laura Parker. "I ain't gonna tell you again. I've had a shitty day, say the least, and I want you outta here 'fore I open my eyes again, 'cause I'm a little inclined to shoot you right now."

"Don't threaten me." Hugo felt his hand on his knife. "I don't want to leave you alone with her unconscious body."

His head snapped back so fast, his neck cracked, and there was a gun right between his eyes. Hugo felt blood run down to his lips and was certain his nose was broken. The son of a bitch had slugged him with that pistol.

"Real fuckin' noble, shithead. Change in plans. Get out, get inside that windmill, don't let a single man leave, not to take a piss, nothing. I'm countin' to three."

Oh, his death would be sweet. The corners of Hugo's lips curved up and he exited the truck.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! You can find this and a lot more at my tumblr, warmommy.tumblr.com!


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